Allies as Guides in the Borderlands: The Development of an Online Ally Program to Foster Belonging for LGBTIQ+ Students and Staff at a Regional University (Mann 2022)

The study discusses the importance of creating a sense of belonging for LGBTIQ+ individuals in higher education. It presents an autoethnographic study of the author’s 12-year experience in developing the Ally Program, a university-wide, extracurricular online training program aimed at fostering connection and belonging for LGBTIQ+ students and staff. The study uses borderlands discourse as a theoretical framework to demonstrate how the author’s own sense of belonging developed and enabled them to create a safe space for participants to feel a sense of belonging and share this with the wider university community. The author further explains the teaching model they have created, drawing on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development as a pedagogical framework to promote meaningful, engaged learning in the borderlands. The passage shows how these frameworks intertwine to enable participants to embrace uncertainty, allowing for learning to evolve over time and space, and ultimately fostering a sense of belonging for all LGBTIQ+ students and staff.

Mann, G. (2022). Allies as Guides in the Borderlands: The Development of an Online Ally Program to Foster Belonging for LGBTIQ+ Students and Staff at a Regional University. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 19(4). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1361882